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Palo Alto must build 3,505 new housing units over the next seven years, according to the latest housing allocations released by the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG).
The ABAG Executive Board will meet tonight to vote on how to divvy up 214,500 new housing units throughout the nine Bay Area counties. Of those units, 60,334 would be in Santa Clara County.
But Palo Alto officials already object to the city’s future housing burden.
“We think they’re abnormally high,” Palo Alto Planning Director Steve Emslie said of the ABAG’s numbers for Palo Alto.
He said ABAG fails to take available Stanford land into account that is part of unincorporated Santa Clara County. Currently, ABAG is only planning to require 165 more units to be built in all unincorporated county lands, but Emslie would like to see some of Palo Alto’s requirement shifted over to Stanford. That land could accommodate 3,000 housing units under the university’s general use permit, Emslie said.
“They need to fix that, and they’ve been unwilling to do that,” he said.
Palo Alto’s housing allocation is the fourth highest in the county, behind San Jose, Santa Clara and Sunnyvale, which will be required to build 34,717 and 5,873 and 4,426 new units, respectively.
Palo Alto’s allocation is distributed throughout income categories: 35 percent of the units would be for “above-moderate” incomes; 22 percent for moderate incomes; 19 percent for low-income housing; and 24 percent for very low-income housing.
In January, the ABAG board met to approve a methodology for distributing housing throughout the nine counties.
Factors taken into account include available jobs and housing and the municipality’s rate of growth, along with proximity to public transportation.
Palo Alto’s proximity to three Caltrain stations (including the San Antonio Road station in Mountain View along with University and California Avenue stops) earned it a greater responsibility to build up, Emslie said.
The ABAG Executive Board public meeting begins at 7 p.m. tonight in Oakland at the MetroCenter Auditorium at 101 Eighth Street.
After tonight’s vote, cities will have a 60-day public comment period to ask for changes to their allocations.
ABAG plans to finalize numbers before April 2008, according to an ABAG memo.
That must mean new schools will have to be built also.
What a surprise–Palo Alto objecting to having to meet their latest housing allocations and then trying to pass it on to Stanford.
I am sure we will here our mayor, Yoriko, whining that having to build more housing will create too much traffic.
It is too bad that Not so fast feels compelled to describe the City Mayor as was done in the
prior post.
What is the Association of Bay Area Governments? Why can they define how many housing units must be built in Palo Alto? What would be the consequence for not doing this?
Bill–It is too bad that you have not yet caught on to Yoriko’s modus operendi–any time anything is proposed as far as development, business, housing etc, the first thing that we hear from yoriko is concerns about traffic.
Let’s not forget her plan, years ago, to turn one of the main arteries in Palo Alto, where she happens to have her home, into a one-lane in each direction street with roundabouts!!! Or remember when Stanford was renovating the stadium she was concerned about too much traffic on Embarcadero 5 saturdays a year!!!
Unfortunately our mayor has myopic vision and cannot looj at long term benefits to anything.
More homes = more people = more diversity = more intra-community multipliers = more challenge to look at growth as a positive thing = opportunities to INNOVATE in order to accommodate growth = a community that continues to thrive, and maiintain dynamism (instead of saying (“no”).
It’s time to wake up and walk away from the very short-sighted kinds of automatic thinking that accompany fears about development.
I’m waiting to see what happens when the rubber of INNOVATION hits the road, instead of hangingn out talking about itself.
I am astonished at the lack of people expressing concern about the traffic situation in Palo Alto. Adding 3,505 more units will do nothing but worsen already grave commuting and road conditions. The units being built on the corner of El Camino and Arastradero are bad enough but another 3,505 seems absurd.
In response to Saarinen, I do not think it is fear of development that plagues our community but blinding optimism. More homes= more diversity? Do you think about how wonderfully diverse our town is when you are stuck in traffic?
Realist, I think about getting our policy-makers – at the regional level (including our own) to INSIST on EFFEICIENT, AFFORDABLE, and ACCESSIBLE mass transit.
Does anyone imagine, for even a moment, that this city will not continue to be under enormous development pressure – as will the rest of Silicon Valley? Anyone imagining that is living in too small a room.
Instead of bemoaning the guaranteed future – i.e. more people, and more houses – how about insisting on ways to meet that future in a way that doesn’t cram the results of poor planning that results from LACK of transport infrastructure and other innovation down our throats? btw, educational and other innovations will be needed to deal with new population loads.
We keep hearing about innovation. Where’s the beef?
Where are the new ideas for dealing with increased populations, instead of ducking our head in the sand as we repeat the mantra “no new housing”.
Yes of course we can build more homes here in Palo Alto.
What we need to do is look at the big picture, not just the homes.
We will need to put in the types of homes that will be adjacent to amenities. The homes will need to have underground parking, walk ways to facilities like restaurants, train station, convenience stores, etc. They will need parks and entertainment areas. They will need buses to downtown and other areas like the high schools, library and post office. They will need day care centers, schools, and community centers. They will need offices for doctors, dentists, hair salons, delis, nail shops, coffee houses, in fact all the things we use daily.
These things do not happen overnight. They need to be planned. Please do not start building somewhere without getting the infrastructure.
Discussions like this seem to assume that additional housing will be built in big new developments, like the one at El Camino and Charleston. How many housing units could be added if zoning could permit one duplex unit per block of current single-family homes? If the new units were spread out enough throughout the city, the local impact of each one should be minimal.
William
Whereas your idea holds merit, where tell me would there be room for one duplex on each current block. From what I see around town, the monster homes being built are in fact small homes bought by someone with more money than sense (my opinion) which are bulldozed to make way for their mcmansion. Usually, this is private individuals although I expect some are developers.
Yoriko lives on Embarcadero, doesn’t she? Of course she’s concerned about any increase of traffic on that street.
In her defense, I’ll say that the traffic load on Embarcadero does come with particular problems–it’s a main artery from the freeway to Stanford and the downtown, but it’s almost entirely residential, can’t be widened and has three schools on it.
Where would you put 3,000 more housing units? The city’s pretty built out.
Ohlone Par–if PA is indeed built out, then where does the city council want Stanford to build the housing that it claims will be needed to handle all the “new workers” from the hospital expansion????
Dear ABAG,
Palo Alto is a city that is already built out – I guess you missed that point completely in your reports.
Please do not consider building Palo Alto any further.
Sincerely,
– About to Bag Abag.
Prediction: those homes (and more) are going to be built – near long term. Much of it is going to be infill housing, near mass transport. This IS going to happen, and all the whining in the world is not going to stop it. So, settle down, and find another cause (like makingi sure we demand that regional policy makers provide the mass transport that we deserve, instead of keepingi us in our cars)
ABAG is the Association of Bay Area Gov’ts. It is an appointed
and advisory group which supposedly studies current growth
patterns and reports to the state. Then it sends out criteria to
cities as to what their numbers of additional housing units should be to meet the demand. It is advisory only and has little
power. I imagine it listens to the Builders & Developers State
Assocs. also.
Palo Alto’s pretty built out–Stanford is not. Though any large building projects at Stanford will create all sorts of sturm und drang.
Re: infill–yeah, I thought of that, but Palo Alto already has a lot of infill. I just don’t see 3,000 new housing units arising out of infill. I mean, I take it these numbers don’t include the south Paly projects already approved and underway.
You would need to replace a chunk of single-residency with high-density housing. Where? As for the alternative, can the city really afford to convert more commercial real estate to residential? Yeah, Fry’s could be turned into a large apt. complex, but Fry’s is a big revenue generator.